YouTube, Lenovo, and Space Adventures announced that the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on Saturday, July 21 will launch into space the two winning experiments of the YouTube Space Lab competition -- a global science competition challenging 14-18 year-olds to create a science experiment that can be performed in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
JAXA astronauts aboard the HTV3 space rocket will transport the winning experiments, created by Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, of Troy, Michigan and Amr Mohamed, 18, of Alexandria, Egypt more than 250 miles above Earth to the ISS. Once onboard the ISS, U.S. astronaut Sunita Williams will perform the experiments as designed and instructed by the winning students – the results of which will be live streamed from space to the world on a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop via YouTube this fall.
As part of the prize for winning the YouTube Space Lab competition, the global winners were awarded a choice between two unique space experiences: a trip to Japan to watch their experiment blast off to rendezvous with the ISS; or a one-of-a-kind astronaut training experience in Star City, Russia, the training center for Russian cosmonauts. Winners Dorothy and Sara are traveling this week to Japan to watch their experiment take off in the HTV3 rocket, while winner Amr just completed his astronaut training experience in Russia.
The YouTube Space Lab competition challenged budding scientists in two age categories, 14-16 years old and 17-18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, to submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to YouTube.com/SpaceLab. Over 150,000 YouTube users worldwide helped determine winners by voting for their favorite experiment.
